One of the biggest issues many of us face is how to make ends meet. Having secure homestead income streams that pay the bills and provides for you needs (and a few of your wants) is the goal of most homesteaders. While I LOVE the idea of self sufficiency, you always need some cash to survive.

If there is one thing I have learned from experience, and from listening to the experiences of other homesteaders, security comes from having MULTIPLE income streams, and I offer these thoughts about the three major possibilities:

Three homestead income streams

Homestead income streams 1:
Holding down an off-farm job

For many of us, the dream of owning a homestead is complicated as we hold down a job ‘off-farm’.We need that steady income to pay the bills and live the lifestyle to which we have become accustomed.I personally have no problem at all with this concept – although I know many homesteaders who feel that they have let down the dream of complete self sufficiency by working off-farm to make the dream stay alive.The BIG downside of working off-farm is that you can’t devote 100% of your time to the farm and as a consequence your farm goals need to be adjusted.It will take you longer to get things done and you will have to work harder and smarter in a shorter amount of time to keep the homestead running.

A sweet compromise is to become a telecommuter – a person who works from home but for a distant company.While you still have to put in the hours (and maybe more), you don’t waste time commuting from the farm – and those hours/minutes can be used to be productive around the homestead.For more about telecommuting see this blog post, or visit such sites as Telecommuting Basics.There are some great books on the process as well, like this one:

Homestead income streams 2:
Making money from your farm products
Growing, raising or creating products from your farm to sell is the absolute dream of many people who homestead.Many people become very successful at this and as far as I can see there is a few secrets that those people have worked out.Those are:

Find a niche product and become an expert.Like the excellent chicken farmer, the fatted calf farmer, the mushroom spores farmer and so on.

Become a marketer.Without marketing no one will know what you have to sell.

Be flexible so you can catch and ride the trends.

There are many books on different farm product niches – and its worth reading as much as you can and trying the learn from the mistakes and successes of other. Here are some:

The important point here is that to make a good profit you need to be an expert in your field and be able to offer excellent products are the very best prices. Some niches are saturated (how many farms to you drive past with ‘eggs for sale’ signs?) and others have such a narrow market that they require considerable marketing finesse to survive. At one stage being an ‘organic’ farm gave people a real edge, but that niche is quickly becoming saturated. The issue to grapple with is the narrower the niche, the wider you have to market.

When it comes to marketing, there are some great resources out there for doing this…including my own free eBook on how to be a better marketeer.

Being flexible is really the key to meet the highs and lows of your markets. How can you deliver your product better in the low times? What about when you have a glut of product? Can you change your farm practices to work around these issues? What can you do to turn your organic farm into something even better?

A good story here is a local apple orchard near us. At one stage they sold apples by a roadside stand. Then they turned to ‘pick your own apples’ style operation and customers boomed. Now they also offer home made donuts and coffee…and people make the place a whole day outing and their profits soared. Flexibility was the key here.

Homestead income stream 3:Making money onlineMany folks look to online ways to making money for their homestead. The most success seems to come from selling products online, through Etsy, eBay and even CraigsList.

Others attempt to make money through blogging and other writing skills. We, for example, make a little money by writing items for others on science items. Last year we made around $3,000 after tax – not bad for something we can do when its dark outside or the farm is covered in snow. The hardest part of this income stream is finding someone who will pay for your writing skills – but if you are a good writer, there are a few websites to hook writers to people with cash. WriterAccess is one.

This blog makes us a trickle of money….people like you clicking on adverts etc has paid us commissions totally $66 so far (which has paid for the cost of the domain name and hosting). Other blogs (especially those about investing or making money) can make the developers/owners handsome incomes. Farm blogs are more about sharing information around like-minded folks rather than turning huge profits (lets face it, we all want to know how to do things for free or on the cheap, rather than paying big dollars for advice….and thats why I love this community!) I also have advice on what make a good blog post here. Homestead blogging is not new (wow – there are a load of them out there), and they do contain a wealth of information. I doubt that any of them provide a huge income stream – but rather pay the costs of what is more of a hobby for the writer.

What makes for a good blog posts about farming or homesteading? Here are three top types of blog posts that you might consider writing to help others who are involved in homesteading.

Good blog posts

1. “How to do xx”. Nothing gets more hits that a blog past that shows how to do something useful around the farm. How do you prune trees or raise chickens or build a coop or can potatoes etc. These all make good blog posts. Have you worked out a clever way to do something? Then share it in a blog!

A “how to blog”

2. Critical information about farming/homestead issue. People like to read about information at affects their homesteading activities – like land taxes, water rights, boundary surveys, soil testing etc Often the best blogs on these topics are written by people who have had to deal with an issue, and then share what they have learned on a blog.

3. Photo-essays. Do you have a load of photos to help explain a farming process process? I you are say building a new shed, post up a pile of photos of how you went about the process. People LOVE to see how things are done. The problem I have in writing these blog posts is remembering to take a load of photos as I do some task.

If you are new to blogging, then there are some great blogs about how to write a general post like these:

What does not work well as blog posts?

In my opinion, here are the three things that blogs should not be:

1. Personal travel/life logs. We know you had a great holiday, but if you are just telling folks about your trip and not providing any information that will help them as they go about being homesteaders, then the interest will be low. Likewise, blog about how you had to chop the wood, or pull the weeds really do not add information to the homesteading world, and you will lose readers.

2. Redirects. Blog posts that are just redirects of some other blog are annoying. We understand that you might want to drive people to you blog page (hey – most bloggers would love you to stay and read more of their posts etc), but just being a blog full of redirects where you offer no additional information will soon drive people to ignore your blog completely. Sorry – these are not good blog posts!

3. Over placement of advertising. Again I get that people want to try and make a few dollars from their blog to support their farm, but pages complete full of advertising so its hard to even see the text of the blog become just too tiresome for the reader…and they will soon ignore you blog (and then you will get LESS clicks on those adverts!)

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When we visit the beach we end up covered in salt water and sand – its part of the fun, right? I actually hate it….I hate that feeling of sticky saltiness mixed with sunscreen and the grit of sand.

A day at the beach is not complete without a shower

Simple beach shower trick

A few years back a friend introduced us to this simple solution. We fill up a number (about five or six for a family of four) of clean, used large plastic soda/soft drink bottles (the 1.5 L ones are perfect) with water from the tap and take them with us to the beach. When we arrive, we take the bottles out and lay them in the sun. Often we keep one bottle out of the sun…you will see why below. We place the bottles against a dark background, such as the rock platform (perfect on the basalts of Hawaii) or even on a black surface of our car. If you can’t find those, then on the grass or even on a dark towel works. Then off we go to play on the beach!

Bottles (for a group of folks) on the rocks in Hawaii

Water bottles on our car,

When we are finished with the beach for the day we use the water, which has now been warmed by the sun, to rinse off before getting in our car or walking home. We ALWAYS check the water first to make sure it is not too hot. Sometimes we have to mix in a little cold water from the bottle kept out of the sun.

Ollie loves to shower off the sand

It’s a simple trick that makes a lot of sense (and a great way to reuse those plastic bottles!)

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